Monday, February 27, 2012

I got back from USA's yesterday and lets just say I didn't perform how I wanted to. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong but it is something that I don't intend to happen again. I like to learn quickly from my mistakes so next year I will be better prepared.

My coach peaked us correctly, my body felt great and the ball felt light. I honestly felt like I could have thrown 85ft on Saturday but I couldn't seem to hit a throw. I didn't get warmed up until my 5th throw and it was a cage foul. Cory Martin was coaching me at the meet and he felt like that would have been the throw to do it because for the first time that meet I had the ball in the right position and I didn't turn it all of the way through and rushed the finish.

After I threw I called my coach and told him that I felt a little too good for the meet. I haven't thrown in a big meet in 4 years which means I haven't had a peak in 4 years. My confidence was high, my body felt great, and I feel as though that made me a little too relaxed. After the opening throw I should have been fired up to throw, but I wasn't. I was so loose and relaxed that I kept getting my foot down late on my 2nd turn and in turn kept falling back on my release. Like I said earlier, I couldn't seem to get my blood to start pumping to throw until finals and by the time I was ready I was out of throws. Cory kept telling me that I didn't seem aggressive and that is exactly what I couldn't seem to find. I threw high 79s on my last throw but decided to scratch it because it wouldn't have won the meet. I will say that what it came down to was that I wasn't prepared enough mentally to throw far at this meet.

Now we move on to the event that matters most which is the hammer. I look forward to seeing how far I've progressed since going indoors. I think I've actually taken more hammer throws indoors than weight so the transition should be pretty easy. Starting March 1st I will be working out with one of my coaches Connie Price-Smith and my training partner Gwen Berry to get into better physical shape for the hammer and I'm sure my coach John Smith will put me into a month of hard base training before I open in April.

After performing at USA's I find myself with a little extra spark and motivation heading into outdoors. One thing that I am is a competitor and I take losing personal. I try to think of where I went wrong and what I can do the next time so that I don't lose again. I feel as though I have something to prove this year outdoors, and hopefully I am capable of proving it.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Tomorrow morning I am flying out to Albuquerque from St. Louis. I want to note that I am afraid of flying, so while I am excited to get there, I'm not excited about the trip to get there. My practices have been going really well this past week and I can tell that I am peaking at exactly the right time. I tweaked a few things earlier this week on my entry thanks to Gwen Berry, which hopefully will translate into bigger throws on Saturday.

That is really all that I have for now. I will let how I do on Saturday speak for itself.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

It is 6:30AM and I am wide awake. This is a habit of my work hours where even on my days off I wake up at 5:30AM wide awake. It feels good to be off for the next 3 days and being able to sleep a little longer than I do on my work days. This weekend I won't be competing and will be using the time to rest up and work on a few technical things before USA's.

Practice yesterday was a little frustrating in most ways but there were some good things I got out of it. I have to remember that once I was in better throwing shape in college Wednesdays weren't very good throwing days for me and Mondays, which is the day after my hard lifting workout of the week, always seemed to be better. Since I started back training those days had been reversed until now, where Wednesday I always threw better than I did on Monday. I see the change as a good thing due to the fact that Mondays are much heavier throwing days and all of my balls went far this week. Yesterday I felt a little sluggish but nothing to worry about.

For the past few weeks I have developed a problem with letting my ball rise too much on my entry which has attributed to me struggling to throw over 80ft. If anyone watched me compete the past 2 weeks, you could see that I was throwing the ball into the rafters. I think the ball went 80ft into the air before it even landed these past two weeks. The highlight of yesterdays practice is that I think for the most part I fixed that problem. Coach had me doing a few different things yesterday to try and keep the ball down and I think it helped a lot. The biggest adjustment though came from when J.C. Lambert started helping me on my entry at the end of practice. At one point he had the same problem that I am having now and was able to correct it. He had me try two different things on my entry and the ball started taking off instantly. I am looking forward to working on this the next few practices before I leave.

One of the great things about training here at SIU is just the overall throwing atmosphere. Everybody pushes everybody everyday. I train with two other hammer throwers and they are my legitimate competition every meet, and to make the Olympic team this year. Yet, if we see each other doing something wrong we help each other, knowing it is only making our competition better. The best advantage of throwing with them is that every single practice is a competition. If I am struggling one day and they aren't, I work that much harder to try and beat them every practice, and they do the same. The training intensity we get from practice is something you can't get from training by yourself. Also, the fact that we are three different builds of throwers makes things interesting also. Coach calls us his Ferrari, Mack truck, and Tractor lol.

Today is Thursday so I will be throwing hammer a little later today but before that I will probably go and help Coach Connie out in the office for a few hours. I'm about to go cook some breakfast and relax a little before I head to the track office so that is all for now.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

USA's is 2 weeks away and I couldn't be more anxious, but in a good way. I am excited to see how far I can throw when my body is peaked out. In an effort to keep myself as fresh as possible, I will be in Carbondale for the next two weeks and won't be traveling back and forth to Chicago which should help my body out a lot.

This past weekend I threw at Iowa State University. I always like throwing there because their ring is fast like ours in Carbondale. I ended up throwing 24.35m this time out. I really felt like I could have gotten over 80ft again but I feel like the day to do it would have been the day before. Usually I lift hard on Sundays so that my body is recovered by Friday to throw my farthest but I threw on Saturday this week and I feel as though I was too recovered. This is something that I will have to adjust for USA's since I throw Saturday there as well.

Since today is Sunday, I lifted weights this afternoon. I can feel my body getting ready to peak because I am feeling the most powerful and explosive that I have felt this season so far. I had my best clean workout of the season so far at 135kg. Since being off for 3yrs my squats are still a little down from where they were when I was in college but was able to box squat 308kg today. I have faith that they will get much better during outdoor season now that I can consistently lift weights with my coach in Carbondale.

March 1st marks day 1 of outdoor hammer throwing. SIU is building a new outdoor track and field facility, so although the winter has been mild here, our old cage was torn down in the process so we have unable to go outside to throw. I am very excited to finally get outside and start throwing hammer. I probably won't open up until April so that gives me the entire month of March to adjust to throwing outdoors as well as getting into better overall physical hammer shape.

Well, its 7PM here now and I am on my way to go see the new Denzel Washington movie Safe House so that is all for now.

Monday, February 6, 2012

It's been around a week since I last posted on here so I think that it is time to update. As I have more time I will update more often. It is pretty time consuming to train, compete, and work full time. Today is Monday so I will be traveling back home to Chicago for 2 nights before coming back to Carbondale for the next few weeks. I get off work at 12:30PM today (yes I am working right now) and will go to practice as soon as I get off and then hitting the road for the lovely 4hr drive back home.

It feels good being back in Carbondale so often. When I was in college I didn't appreciate the small town environment as much as I do now. It is the perfect place to train because there aren't distractions like there are in a big city where all of my friends and family are, although I do miss them at times. I would like to make one note and that is "Go Giants!". Although I am a Bears fan at heart, the Giants are my 2nd favorite team and I am glad they won.

Indoor season is slowly coming to an end now. In less than 3 weeks, my training partner Gwen Berry and I will be traveling to New Mexico for USA Indoor Nationals. I threw 24.52m I think was the mark, this past weekend here at SIU. I am glad I got over 80 again, but I feel like I could have thrown farther. My lower back has been sore since Wednesday when my SI slipped out during practice. Coach and I decided to err on the side of rest that week, so I didn't throw or lift on Thursday like I usually do. Friday morning I was still a little sore, but nowhere near as bad as Wednesday and Thursday so I decided to go ahead and throw. Usually on Thursdays I do an explosive light lifting workout which gives me a little more, 'snap', as I like to call it on meet day. Since I skipped it this week I did not feel anywhere near as explosive as I usually do on meet day although I felt powerful. Technically, I threw pretty badly and still managed to throw it over 80. I was allowing the low point on the ball to drop too low and bending over on my entry. The fact that I had probably my worst week of practice in over a month and threw over 80 gives me a little more confidence going into Nationals when my body will be peaking. I have a goal distance that I would like to throw, but I won't say what it was until after I compete at USAs.

I am looking forward to outdoor since that is when things really start to count. I have gotten better technically and at feeling the ball since I started training again. I have put more focus into my footwork than I have done in other years. I have always had a habit of picking up my feet and skipping across the ring on turns 2 and 3 but I have cleaned that up a lot. It is nowhere near perfect, but better. With outdoor season, also comes time for me to drop weight. I am very motivated to get leaner and more explosive for outdoor season. I am confident that I can lose a decent amount of weight while still building my strength levels. I will admit it will be hard because I like to eat, but it is something that I need to do.